Preprints
https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-2020-5
https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-2020-5
02 Mar 2020
 | 02 Mar 2020
Status: this discussion paper is a preprint. It has been under review for the journal Annales Geophysicae (ANGEO). The manuscript was not accepted for further review after discussion.

Ionospheric total electron content anomaly possibly associated with the April 4, 2010 Mw7.2 Mexico earthquake

Jing Liu, Wenbin Wang, and Xuemin Zhang

Abstract. Identifying ionospheric disturbances potentially related to an earthquake is a challenging work. Based on the ionospheric total electron content (TEC) data from the madrigal database at the Haystack Observatory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a new decomposition and nonlinear fitting method has been developed and applied in this work to extract the TEC disturbances that are potentially related to the Mw7.2 Mexico earthquake occurred on April 4 2010. By analyzing the TEC data for a long period of time (72 days) before and after the earthquake, we found that a unique TEC depletion occurred in the region around the epicenter on March 25. No other significant ionospheric TEC anomalies were identified in the 72-day period around the earthquake, except some TEC disturbances that appeared to be related to the geomagnetic activity between April 1 and 6, 2010. We further analyzed the TEC data from other magnetically quiet days, and no TEC anomaly like that occurred on March 25 was detected. The TEC data calculated from a first principles model SD-WACCM-X were also analyzed using the same method as that for the observational data. No TEC anomaly was found on March 25 from the model outputs either. Thus the source of the TEC anomaly on March 25 is unlikely from the lower atmosphere waves. In this study, we show the occurrence of TEC anomaly on March 25, 10 days before the Mw7.2 Mexico earthquake and this TEC anomaly may not be explained by lower atmosphere or geomagnetic activity forcing.

Jing Liu, Wenbin Wang, and Xuemin Zhang
 
Status: closed
Status: closed
AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment
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Status: closed
Status: closed
AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment
Printer-friendly Version - Printer-friendly version Supplement - Supplement
Jing Liu, Wenbin Wang, and Xuemin Zhang
Jing Liu, Wenbin Wang, and Xuemin Zhang

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Short summary
Identifying ionospheric disturbances associated with an earthquake is a useful and challenging work. A new decomposition and nonlinear fitting method has been developed to analyze ionospheric total electron content (TEC) data, and to extract disturbances that are likely related to Mw7.2 Mexico earthquake occurred on April 4, 2010. We found a unique TEC depletion that occurred around the epicenter on March 25, which cannot be explained by lower atmosphere wave or geomagnetic activity forcing.